URUGUAY’S WINE INDUSTRY

This South American country’s viticultural industry is relatively short and dates back only to the 19th century.
The first growers were Basque immigrants who brought with them the tannat in 1870. The Uruguayan growers call it harriague, named after the Frenchman Pascual Harriague who was looking for a suitable grape variety and stumbled or selected after researching the tannat. This grape variety yields tannic wines that need long barrel aging to soften, but these days the modern technology helps make wines that are already enjoyable in two to three years. The technology developed in France is called micro oxygenation, and is now being applied to many tannic grape varieties successfully everywhere.
This small country of approximately three-and-a-half million inhabitants is now the fourth most important South American wine-producing jurisdiction.
Some 83 000 hectares of vineyards cultivated by close to 2000 growers. There are about 20 wineries that produce wines adhering to international standards.
Tannat is a tough, black berries, astringent grape variety that constitutes a large part of Madiran wines in south-western France. Its high tannin content necessitates blending with cabernet franc and occasionally also with cabernet sauvignon to mitigate astringency.
A winemaker in Madiran invented the process of microoxigenation explained above.
Because of its astringency, and inky black dense colour, tannat has been losing popularity in France, but in Uruguay the wines turn out to be less tannic and more approachable, particularly when the technique of micro oxygenation is applied judiciously.
In Argentina malbec, In Chile carmenere, and in Uruguay tannat have become signature grapes, although all originate in farce and have lost a lot of ground there.
Although hot, growers have established vineyards on high elevations to mitigate the undesirable effects of heat at lowlands. They grow chardonnay, pinot blanc, albarino, petit manseng, chenin blanc, gewürztraminer, sauvignon blanc, and riesling fro white wines, and tannat, merlot, cabernet franc, and cabernet sauvignon for red.
Originally, vineyards were established around Montevideo, the capital, but now they are spread all over the country.
In Uruguay summers are warm with sufficient rainfall for vineyards to thrive.
Up to 1990’s winemaking was old-style, using huge upright barrels for fermentation and temperature controls, but substantial investments were made to install modern presses, temperature controlled stainless steel fermentation tanks and small barrels for aging.
Since 1990’s Uruguay has been exporting high-quality wines throughout Latin America, the
U S A, even to the Gulf States.
Canada, especially Ontario also imports some tannat wines from time to time.
The national institute of Wine culture (INAVI) in charge of overseeing quality and “traceability” has been successful in ensuring standards.
This has been instrumental in increasing exports from 1.2 millon litres to more than 13 in five years.